


Free Bird

by sweettasteofbitter



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 16:36:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17922440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweettasteofbitter/pseuds/sweettasteofbitter
Summary: A story about birdsong and freedom.





	Free Bird

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written based on a prompt: "Bird Song".
> 
> I love writing about Roe Trevelyan and I love how much she loves birds.

It was sparrows that first taught Roe their song. Not pigeons, strangely enough, their bulbous bodies always present in the marketplace, their grey wings sent aflutter when being pounced upon by the odd stray cat, but the sparrows in the Ostwick Chantry garden. Their titter-tatter was curiously like that of devoted Chantry mothers, saying too little with too many words. As opposed to the members of the fold, however, the sparrows did not bother Roe, and so she allowed herself to be distracted by them whenever she pleased.

When her parents, highly esteemed Lady and Lord Trevelyan, started to notice that their daughter was whistling back at birds and failed to remember her prayers, or even what she had done that day, she was prohibited from entering the Chantry gardens.

The pigeons were next, of course. Their song came naturally to her. A given.

It did not take long before she was no longer allowed to go enter the marketplace unaccompanied.

Her parents’ fears of her being a mage was for naught. It wasn’t magic; it was a teenage girl’s fascination with living beings from which she could expect more understanding than from the entirety of her bloodline combined. Much like her family and the Chantry mothers, birds couldn’t answer her questions – but they could teach her how to be patient, to be kind. They taught her that freedom was taken, and never given by others.

After sparrows and pigeons came robins and blackbirds. Then, after lonely, drawn out months and the decision to designate herself with her freedom, leaving her with forests and fields to trod through rather than cobblestone streets, it was barn owls, larks, and starlings that bestowed their song upon her. Roe gratefully accepted their generous gifts, and promised to take good care of their secrets.

She took a shining to birds that, like her, elected to be cloaked in shades of black. She learned the difference between all sorts of corvids; crows, ravens, and jackdaws. Their claws and beaks marked the skin of her fingers when she tried to feed them, but she persevered. It was difficult to tell blue-blackish feathers apart, but she collected them and stowed them away in her purse nonetheless.

She landed in Kirkwall, and it was there that the magpie turned out to be the only bird she did not learn from but _became_ –she was Magpie, Magpie was her. Her nimble, scarred fingers and her keen eyes that could detect any shiny object were what earned her the moniker. She had never been and would never become proud of what friends and rivals alike considered her greatest achievements of thievery. She was deeply, deeply ashamed, and some mornings the tears would not stop falling. But she was alive, and she was free, so there was that.

After the explosion at the Conclave, there was no birdsong.

There was only silence, and confusion, followed by sounds that weren’t of the physical realm. Afterwards, it took Roe weeks to remember how she had even ended up at the Conclave in the first place. Birds refused to grace Haven with their presence, so the air was devoid of birdsong, and thus of freedom.

Roe refused to be called of Herald of Andraste. She had already accepted a title that others had given her once, and she would not make the same mistake again.

It wasn’t until the Storm Coast that Roe became familiar with the screeching of gulls. They would be the only birds which she would never grow to appreciate, and she filed the species away in the vast library in her mind as “either sound like they’re fucking, or being brutally murdered – neither of which I want to walk in on”.

The role of Inquisitor was now irrevocably tied to her name, another sliver of freedom taken. And yet...she could not deny that there were certain liberties to the title. She could help people, and she was building a home here, which she hadn’t been able to say in years. She traveled to places she had never even heard of, and she watched. She listened. She learned.

Crestwood was one of these places, and although it was the opposite of pleasant, Roe still thought it was much more welcoming than the undead-filled swamps they had braved in their search for lost Inquisition scouts. At least there were buildings that people lived in, rather than their cursed husks.

Upon their arrival in Crestwood, Sera pointed at a number of black feathered silhouettes perched upon a statue, wet with the continuous downpour.

“Bunch of ravens. Might be Leliana’s?”

Roe sighed. She thought it hilarious that someone with the name of Nightingale would keep the company of ravens, but she had never voiced those thoughts to anyone. Knowing Leliana, who would find out about it sooner rather than later, it was better if she didn’t.

“They’re crows, so no.” Roe shook her head.

“How can you even tell the difference?” Sera asked. “They’re both just black feathery things with sharp poke-y bits coming out of their face.”

“Pure guesswork.” Roe winked. “Either that, or I was raised by birds.”

“You’re weird. You’re always weird but now you’re being extra-weird.”

“Wow, cheers Sera,” Roe grinned, and punched her friend in the shoulder.

Crestwood looked pretty when the rains had finally died down, but the Frostback Basin was a true heaven. Brightly colored monal pheasants flew high above their heads, looking for a perch high up in the tall trees that stretched out far above them. Roe could barely believe her luck, staring at these wondrous birds with tears of joy in her eyes, and gathering the feathers they had shed. She would take these gifts of nature back to Skyhold so she could show a certain Ambassador just how lovely and beautiful all the different shades were – almost as beautiful as her.

It wasn’t until Antiva, where Roe married the most beautiful, most intelligent woman she had ever met, when she well and truly started to appreciate the song of parakeets. She had seen their colorful plumage in Orlesian markets, her urge to unlock their cages and draw everyone’s attention to the beaked fugitives rising, but she had never seen them fly, free to live as they chose.

“You don’t love birds better than you love me, do you?” Josephine asked, her arms around Roe’s shoulders. And though her words were said in jest, Roe sensed there was a deeper, underlying insecurity, and she could not bear the idea that Josephine actually thought this was true.

“No!” Roe hastened to say. “No, no, no.” She kissed her wife’s cheek, then her lips, and whispered, softly: “ _No_. Never. I love birds, but nothing compares to you. I love you most of all.”

“Good,” Josephine said solemnly, and held Roe a little closer.


End file.
